Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the man behind TM, was born around 1918, in
central India in a nonpriestly caste. Not much is known about his past
because he refuses to talk about it. In 1940, he took a bachelor's
degree in physics from Allahabad University. Then until 1953, he sought
enlightenment under his guru Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, who was then
Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath in the Himalayas. It is said that just
before the Swami died, he commissioned Mahesh Yogi to evolve a simple
form of meditation which anyone could learn and practice. In obedience
to this directive, Mahesh hid away in the Himalayas for two years. When
he emerged, he started the TM movement, and in 1956 he took the title
"Maharishi," meaning "Great Seer."

Initiation

Potential devotees are assured that they don't have to change their
religious beliefs in order to practice TM. Bob Jono and I were impressed by
these "scientific proofs" for the validity of TTM, so we decided to take a
four-day course at the beautiful Academy of Meditation at Shankaracharya
Nagar, Rishikesh. We had to offer fresh flowers, fruits, camphor, a white
handkerchief, and a small fee of Rs. 11/- each.

A worship ceremony was arranged in which the picture of Mahesh Yogi's
guru was worshiped. The initiator recited Sanskrit prayer, including one
the Maharishi has written at the end of his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.
This prayer offers worship to the main gurus who stand in the tradition of
Advaita Vedanta. The last half of it says:
"To Shankaracharya, the redeemer, hailed as Krishna and Badarayana,
to the commentator of the Brahma Sutras, I bow down again and again.
At whose door the whole galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and
night, adorned with immeasurable glory, preceptor fo the whole world,
having bowed down to him, we gain fulfillment."

The recitation of the prayers had a soothing effect. They were intended to
make us passive and receptive so that the initiator could plan the mantra
(bij, or seed) deep in our subconscious mind with the help of psychic forces
generated by his worship of these deities.

In the Appellate Court

Controversy over whether the Maharishi's philosophy was "pure science"
or religion led the debate into the U.S. court system. Defeated in the district
court, he proceeded to take his case to the U.S. court of appeals in
Philadelphia. The counsel for TM argued that TM and SCI should be permitted
entrance into the public schools as a true science. Oral arguments were
heard on December 11, 1978. The presiding judge quoted the follow from TM's
initiation ceremony:

Guru in the glory of Brahma.
Guru in the glory of Vishnu.
Guru in the glory of the great Lord Shiva.
Guru in the glory of the personified transcendented
fullness of Brahman, to Him,
to Shri Guru Dev adorned with glory,
I bow down.

Then the judge asked, "What's scientific about that?" Instead of responding
directly, the Maharishi's lawyer referred to an affidavit which stated that
such ceremonies were sometimes used for secular occasions in India. The court
remarked that the effect of that affidavit was to "take a cow and put a sign
on that says `horse.'"

On February 2, 1978, the panel of the Appellate Court, consisting of
three judges, gave its ruling upholding the lower court's decision agains TM.
A thirty-four page concurring opinion was given by one of the judges, which
discussed the legal question involved in the case regarding the definition
of religion and declared that TM was religion and not merely religious in
nature.

The Maharishi could have gone on to the Supreme Court to challenge this
ruling and try to preserve the right to teach TM in schools as a true science.
Instead, he tried another deception.

TM as Medicine

The Maharishi decided to sell TM as an established treatment for many
ailments and a panacea for public health care. From 1979 onwards this became
the chief strategy of the movement. The first attempts were made in America,
the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Denmark.

A "society promoting the medical use of TM" was established in Denmark,
claiming a membership of forty doctors whose names were not made known
to the public. The society proposed that
"TM be seen as a valuable supplement to existing medical treatment and an
effective prophylactic means to avoid resource-wasting institutional treatment.
Clinical research has shown that the method has been useful as a part of a
treatment of various diseases, e.g. high blood pressure, asthmatic diseases,
(and) over overweight and sleeping problems."
The doctors proposed that similar research be done in public health programs
to show the good effects of TM and urged that TM treatment be subsidized
by public health insurance.

This triggered off a national debate. The question was raised in
parliament and the Minister of the Interior, Knud Enggard, presented a report
from the health department. The found it strange that a group of medical
doctors should recommend one particular system of meditation. TM, which
used rituals related to Hindu gods when the same effect could be obtained
through the use of neutral systems of meditation.

The proposal was given its death blow by the ethical committee of the
Danish Medical Society. A woman who had been prescribed the practice of TM
as a medical treatment asked the Committee whether this was correct. The
ethical committee said:
"It is inconceivable that any doctor would require a patient to receive such
treatment . . . .

Even if there are very few who will understand the words of the ritual
or the mantra, subsequent explanation of the meaning can undoubtedly cause
discomfort or indeed give rise to serious inner conflicts, especially for
religious individuals who have been through the process on the assumption
that the words used were of a neutral character with no religious
associations."

TM couldn't accept the advice of the ethical committee, because that
would have meant eliminating the distinction between esoteric and exoteric
teachings of TM. If they explained to their "patients" that the mantra was
the name of a deity and that puja was idol worship of it, then it would be
established that TM was a religion and not a medical treatment. This would
imply that TM ought to be sold as a religion, not as a science or as a medical
treatment. If sold as a religion, it could claim neither easy acceptance
nor state funding.

Is TM a Religion?

A Philadelphia judge ruled that it was. However, a religion which uses
deception as its basic strategy for self propagation is an irreligious religion.
Far from being a religion that can provide utopia, it is a mercenary religion
and a mockery of all that is genuine in Hinduism.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has been appealing to all the world governments
through full-page advertisements in magazines to allow him to solve all their
problems through TM. He is prepared to work for the governments to be paid
on the basis of results. He claims that "discovery of the Unified Field of
all the laws of Nature ... has raised us to the doorstep of Utopia."
Therefore, all problems can be solved through his technology. The simple
problem with this claim, though, is that in many of the countries the
government itself is the biggest socioeconomic problem. In the Phillipines,
then-President Marcos gave a formal invitation to the Maharishi to help solve
his problems. Yet popular movements described as law-and-order problems by
the rolers are not the ones that need solution; societies such as the
Philippines need to be saved from oppressive, tyrannical, exploitative
governments. But Maharishi is on the side of the governments - whatever their
nature - because they have the kind of money that can pay his fee. The
poor - oppressed by their governments - can't pay even the initiation fee,
let alone the fee he demands for solving their problems.

How can a religious leader build the edifice of his movement on such
deceptions? The Maharishi finds justification for such deception in the
Bhagavad Gita:
"Those deluded by the gunas of Nature are attached to the actions of
the gunas. Let not him who knows the whole disturb the ignorant who
knows only the part."
Commenting on this verse, the Maharishi writes:
"If the enlightened man wants to bless one who is ignorant, he should
meet him on the level of his ignorance and try to lift him up from
there by giving him the key to transcending, so that he may gain
bliss-consciousness and experience the Reality of life. He should
not tell him about the level of the realized, because it would
only confuse him."
That the Maharishi would ask a person to start meditating before understanding
the whole religious philosophy is understandable. But to assure a would-be
meditator that "we are not a religion" is a definite lie. Such lying and
deception are permissible in the Maharishi's religion because ultimately his
monistic philosophy doesn't admit the duality of good and evil. Nothing
can be ultimately evil in his system.